CRESTON, IA. — Rick Perry returned to Iowa on Tuesday with a revamped stump speech and in search of renewed momentum leading into the last week before the Jan. 3 caucuses.

Fifteen minutes after Perry was scheduled to speak Tuesday morning in Council Bluffs, an aide wearing an earpiece and suit jacket walked in front of the still-waiting crowd and placed a black binder on the lectern embossed with the words, “GOVERNOR PERRY.”

It was the first stop on leg two of the Texas governor’s bus tour across the state, and he was running late.

A moment later, Perry, scheduled to arrive through the crowded front entrance, peeked around the corner from the kitchen area: “Howdy!”

Perry started off on a fiery speech on topics such as border control, periodically glancing down at the open binder that contained his speech prompts:

“We have put Ranger Recon team …

“… additional state troopers …

“… the national guard …”

In a televised ad earlier this year, Perry criticized President Barack Obama for reading his remarks from a teleprompter, while proclaiming that Perry himself is a “doer, not a talker.”

The Council Bluffs stop marked the debut of a tighter, more pointed, and, yes, more scripted stump speech from Perry, one that his state campaign chair Bob Haus called “a closing argument” to Iowa caucugoers as the caucuses quickly approach.

Perry’s prompts, printed in a large serif font, occasionally had entire sections slashed out with a giant “Z” from a black marker, Perry’s self-edits on his way into town from the airport, Haus said.

A former front-runner who casts himself as a straight-shooting outsider, Perry dampened his poll position in Iowa after a series of debate gaffes that the candidate quickly owned up to. Perry has since sought to push his policies to the forefront.

Perry’s speech brought more passion and fewer downward looks as he progressed through four stops on Tuesday, though the candidate always paused to get one line right, the new anchor of his presidential pitch:

“If you don’t leave out of here but with one thing that you remember about this meeting today, I want you to answer this question: Why should you settle for anything less than an authentic conservative who will fight for your views and values without an apology,” he said at a Council Bluffs cafe.

A similar call against settling was adopted earlier this year in the stump speech of another candidate, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann.

“We can’t settle,” she told a Cedar Rapids crowd in September. “We have to have a candidate who has it all.”

Bachmann, herself on a barnstorming bus tour across Iowa, also kicked off the second leg of her tour from Council Bluffs Tuesday morning. Both candidates are emphasizing their social values in a bid for Iowa’s evangelicals, whose support appears to remain scattered among several candidates.

Perry’s reworked speech ended with a religious flourish borrowed from Chapter 6 of the biblical book of Isaiah, a passage in which the book’s namesake volunteers to be sent to spread a divine message to an increasingly stubborn people.

Perry’s translation asked Iowans to send his message to the American government:

“Isaiah, he said, ‘Here am I. Send me.’ My challenge to you is that this country is calling,” Perry said in Creston. “I want to ask you to brave the weather on Jan. 3. Lord willing, it will be just like this out there right now. But I don’t know.”

OTHER THEMES: Perry was joined on the trail Tuesday by Joe Arpaio, the controversial Arizona sheriff who was accused of racial profiling by the Justice Department. “But I have to thank Governor Perry, again, for supporting me. It takes sometimes some guts to support me,” Arpaio said.